"Creme (2005) notes that [when we ask teaching students to write a reflective journal] we require more than a personal voice: we ask our students to open themselves up in the process of writing on very personal experiences, which means being honest and authentic in what they write. This involves taking a risk in the content they write" (Pavlovich 2007:285). This blog is a candid reflection on my experiences as a trainee teacher, to only include good experiences would not be truly reflective or representative of my experience.

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Poster Presentation

When I saw that one of the assessments for the PGCE was in the form of an academic poster I was quite excited. A chance to be creative to design something and add a touch of innovation.

As it turned out when I realised what the topic was and what had to be included I lost my enthusiasm and decided to go for the less stressy option of creating an interactive online poster. I didn’t imagine that I’d enjoy putting it together as much as I did nor that it would allow me to be creative in a very different way to that I’d initially envisaged.

The poster had to discuss the influences on curriculum development in our area of specialism, specifically what we teach. Naturally then I chose to focus mine on BTEC Business Level 3.

I used Prezi as my design software for this one, and saw a chance to use it as I’d seen demonstrated as something miles apart from Powerpoint rather than I had been using it, that is something feet apart from Powerpoint.

I really enjoyed the opportunity to forget conventional ways of presenting information, of critically analysing and of linking my work to academic sources. I enjoyed the challenge of using Prezi in a different way and of making the poster more of a multi-media exercise, something more organic and less staid than an essay or report and more expressive and engaging than a traditional academic presentation. If nothing else it’s made me appreciate more the value of mixed assessment methods and is something I’m considering for an assessment which I have to design to do with marketing for one of my groups and also it has helped me to fine tune primitive Prezi skills.

Whatever happens on Monday all is not lost. I only hope I haven’t got carried away with the creativity and that I actually know my stuff well enough to be able to talk about it when I have to!

I’m looking forward to it, I’ve seen some sneak peaks of the others and they’re looking really good and interesting and I can’t wait to see the different ways everyone has approached the task, besides anything else it will give me a bit of an indication of what to expect if/when I decide to use this as an assessment method myself.